Mike Sullivan Discusses Preseason Loss to Detroit
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Jarry and DeSmith split the game.
After McGinn opened the scoring just 1:42 into play, much of the night was spent on special teams. The Red Wings dominated that area of the game, going 2-for-2 on the power play and 9-for-9 on the penalty kill, while also scoring a shorthanded goal.
The Penguins ended up with 16:57 minutes on the man-advantage, which was good in terms of getting reps and practice for those two units, but did make things a bit discombobulated.
Bryan Rust scored the Penguins' other goal in their 6-2 setback. Afterward, head coach Mike Sullivan provided his thoughts on Pittsburgh's third game of the preseason.
How would you describe the power play tonight?
Well, we'd like it to be better. But having said that, we really haven't spent a lot of time on it. This morning was really the first opportunity that we've had with them to get him some reps. We just simply haven't spent a whole lot of time on it. So we've got a ways to go there, but we know that. We got a lot of reps tonight on the power plays. There were some moments where they had it moving pretty good, and there were others where it was a struggle.
What are your overall takeaways from the game? Especially since this was the first game for a lot of these guys, and you did spend so much time on the power play when you're trying to look at combinations and build chemistry with some guys. How does the coaching staff approach this?
My experience of coaching in this league with veteran players like we have in the lineup tonight is, these guys have been through this an awful lot. You get a little bit of a gauge on what you have to work on and where you have to get better, and that's obvious for us. But I'm also reluctant to overreact in these circumstances, because my experience has been that veteran players, they try to get what they need. They understand, they've been through this a lot. We're trying to get our team ready. We were hopeful that we would have had a stronger effort than we did. We know we've got a ways to go. What I said to the players after the game is, let's not get discouraged. But if there's any takeaway, the takeaway is we got a lot of work to do. I think that's an important aspect of tonight's game. So, we won't get discouraged. We'll go back to practice tomorrow. We'll continue to work at our game plan. We'll slowly implement some more of the team concept. We'll get some special teams work in here coming up this week, that hopefully will give us a better opportunity to take advantage of a night like tonight, when we virtually play a whole period on the power play.
A nice feed from Jason Zucker helps set up that really impressive goal for Bryan Rust. If those two are the ones on the line with Evgeni Malkin, just what connection do you think they might have?
I thought Zuck played well tonight. I thought he was much better tonight than he was in the first game, understanding that Zuck didn't play a lot last year. He's trying to get himself back into game condition, game shape. The fact that he missed the amount of games that he missed, could take him a little bit to get up to speed. So we're trying to get him in game scenarios. For that reason, I thought he was a much better player tonight than the first night. I would expect that he'll continue to get better with each game he plays. If Zuck plays with Geno and Rusty, I think potentially, that line could be very good for us. Rusty and Zuck both bring a lot of speed. I think Zuck is a straight-ahead guy, he's good on the forecheck, he goes to the net front. He's good in the battle areas, and he's got some scoring touch. So potentially, that could be a line that could work for us.
